I volunteer at the Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk, and I always see something cool. This week it was a pair of White Spotted Bamboo Sharks in our Shark and Ray Touch Pool practicing a pre-mating ritual–quite beautiful to watch, as one shark bites the other’s pectoral fin and they swim (and sometimes twist) together.

Most reports I found indicated that it’s usually the male doing the biting[1], but in this case, the pale white one is the male, and the darker one is the female (I saw them turn over and could see clearly the male’s claspers, so yes, I’m sure I know which one was which). Since I don’t carry my cell phone on the floor, I had to wait until I was off-shift and on my way out to grab this photo. I wanted video, but there were too many kids around (normally when I’m heading out, the place is empty, but Sunday there was a special event after hours, so it was crammed).

Anyway…I think these pictures are still good.

[1] Motoyasu Masuda, “Mating, spawning and hatching of the white spotted bamboo shark in an aquarium,” Japanese Journal of Icthyology 45, No. 1 (1998): 29-35, accessed February 27, 2017.